Coup-De-Etat within the US military during Cuban Missile Crisis?

[Star Warrior]

Apparently Khrushchev wasn't the only person at risk of a coup. Kennedy apparently had a real risk of having LeMay pull a coup or a 'general ripper' on himself and star bombing.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19553...ver-given.html

[Color-Copycat]

That's not really a coup. It's more a renegade general.

[Emperor Norton I]

There's the possibility of a rogue general, and there's the possibility of the military command overwhelming the President, and him just losing control of the situation.

I don't think that counts as a coup, per se, though the Soviets may have feared such.

[Tovarich]

Had LeMay actually tried taking over, wouldn't the scene have degenerated within moments to a brawl between him and the Chiefs of Army, Navy, and Marines, about who was to be the new C-I-C?
(With Kennedy in the background, calling "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!")

[Grimm Reaper]

Implausible unless someone can show that enough of the top military officers in the US were sympathetic to a coup at the time...which they were not.

As for Khrushchev, whose major choices in the lead up to the crisis went against the wishes of practically every prominent Russian involved in such planning, it would not have been a coup than the fall of a British Prime Minister who one morning had utterly lost the support of his party/coalition due to unwise choices would be the victim of a coup.

[Emperor Norton I]

There's another point possibly related to this: The US feared that there may have been a hardliner coup against Khrushchev during the crisis, which would have thrown things into a tailspin.

[Admiral Matt]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

Implausible unless someone can show that enough of the top military officers in the US were sympathetic to a coup at the time...which they were not.

To my mind it depends on your definition of the word coup. Certainly you aren't going to see tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, but other scenarios are less easy to rule out. Certainly if the president had obviously frozen up and was unable, even briefly, to respond to events, the consensus of the war room could have started making calls without him. The reason they didn't go over his head was that he was firmly in control of the situation, in the room if nothing else, and making decisive calls. The Joint Chiefs didn't like many cautious decisions, but it was their job. So long as decisions were being made and the president was not obviously crazy, even the strongest sentiments would be too little impetus to break the chain of command.

Had the man actually choked.... That's different. That was one long crisis - if he'd stopped performing I could easily imagine them deciding to put together a set of plans, batter out a common-ground course of action, and then put it in front of the C-in-C. It's not much of a coup - I'm pretty sure they'd back down if he genuinely said "no," but I wouldn't put it past them to badger him until they got a nod otherwise.

[BlondieBC]

A coup where the Junta rules America was not going to happen. This is not to say that there were no risk. A local commander could take aggressive action that would lead to war especially if there was vagueness in the orders. For example, think Patton division size recon unit in Sicily. The army was not in direct contact with the Cubans, so any action like this would likely be by the Air Force or Navy. A ship commander deciding that he was "under attack" by a sub leading to war or LeMay or a lower level air commander taking what he called defensive action.

Now if Kennedy does freeze up and refuses to issues orders, the military would issue orders until he regained his composure. I had to sit through the reading of standing unit orders once, and there is a line in there that goes something like, "In case of foreign attack and an inability to receive orders from above, the highest ranking officer on the scene is authorized to take all actions need to defend America." So for example, if Kennedy has a nervous breakdown, and say the Cubans shoot at an USA spy plane, the LeMay takes whatever action he sees as "best". And some people would see this as a "coup"

I personally believe a lot of the "coup" talk was political BS designed to make JFK look better. If one looks at both the bay of pigs and the cuban missile crisis, JFK really choked. He cancelled the air support for the bay of pigs, making the USA look weak. No competent general ever recommend doing an amphibious assault in 1960's without air support. This weakness leads to Cuban Missile crisis. Now at some point, Kennedy performance improves, but overall, he handled Cuba poorly. The coup talk was political BS to distract attention from JFK weak foreign performance.

[kellineil]

Is there not some clause in the US constitution that allows the rest of the executive to remove the President if he becomes incapable of carrying out his duties? If so such a removal, assuming of course that proper procedure was followed wouldn't be a coup any more than a British government falling after loosing a vote of no confidence would be a coup

[Asnys]

Originally Posted by BlondieBC

I had to sit through the reading of standing unit orders once, and there is a line in there that goes something like, "In case of foreign attack and an inability to receive orders from above, the highest ranking officer on the scene is authorized to take all actions need to defend America." So for example, if Kennedy has a nervous breakdown, and say the Cubans shoot at an USA spy plane, the LeMay takes whatever action he sees as "best". And some people would see this as a "coup"

In the 50s, Eisenhower issued pre-delegation letters authorizing various local commanders to use nuclear weapons if they were under attack and couldn't reach Washington. Those letters were still out there during the Cuban Missile Crisis - Kennedy thought it would be politically impractical to recall them. I'm not sure if they'd still be legal, since they were signed by a different president, but if it's the middle of a crisis, somebody might decide it was legal enough.

[BlondieBC]

Originally Posted by kellineil

Is there not some clause in the US constitution that allows the rest of the executive to remove the President if he becomes incapable of carrying out his duties? If so such a removal, assuming of course that proper procedure was followed wouldn't be a coup any more than a British government falling after loosing a vote of no confidence would be a coup

This was not passed to 1967. See admendment #25

[EnglishCanuck]

Originally Posted by Tovarich

(With Kennedy in the background, calling "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!")

That just made my day

[Orville_third]

By this time was Edwin Walker recalled?

[Faralis]

I honestly think that people oversimplifies LeMay, he was a "old bomber school" "all is better with carpet bombing", and he do thought that Kennedy was a weak dove, but he tended to say what he thought at the people´s faces, not the sort of person who would have plotted a military coup, the man was as sneaky as a B-52 with its full nuclear ordnance ... And he was a friend of part of Kennedy´s staff too ...

I consider a coup improbable, IIRC what Kennedy feared was a rebellion of his Military staff resigning in mass, making the US looking "weak" at the worst moment possible.